These words thrilled Jack with joy, and when he repeated them to Bélisaire, the little attic positively glowed and palpitated with happiness. Madame Bélisaire was suddenly filled with a desire to learn, and her husband must teach her to read. But while M. Rivals was pleased at Jack’s progress with his books, he was discontented with the state of his health; the old cough had come back, his eyes were feverish and his hands hot. “I do not like this,” said the good man; “you work too hard; you must stop; you have plenty of time: Cécile does not mean to run away.” Never had the girl been more loving and tender; she seemed to feel that she must take his mother’s place as well as her own; and it was precisely this sweetness that induced Jack to make greater exertions each day. His bodily frame was in the same condition as that of the Fakirs of India—urged to such a point of feverish excitement that pain becomes a pleasure. He was grateful to the cold of his little attic, and to the hard dry cough that kept him from sleeping. Sometimes at his writing-table he suddenly felt lightness throughout all his being—a strange clearness of perception and an extraordinary excitement of all his intellectual faculties; but this was accompanied with great physical exhaustion. His work went like lightning, and all the difficulties of his task disappeared. He would have gone on thus to the end of his labor, had he not received a painful shock. A telegram arrived: “Do not come to-morrow; we are going away for a week. Rivals.” Jack received that despatch just as Madame Bélisaire had ironed his fine linen for the next day. The suddenness of this departure, the brevity of the despatch, and even the printed characters instead of his friend’s well-known writing, affected him most painfully. He expected a letter from Cécile or the doctor to explain the mystery, but nothing came, and for a week he was a prey to suspense and anxiety. The truth was: neither Cécile nor the doctor had left home, but that M. Rivals wished for time to prepare the youth for an unexpected blow—for a decision of Cécile’s so extraordinary that he hoped his granddaughter would be induced to reconsider it. One evening, on coming into the house, he had found Cécile in a state of singular agitation; her lips were pale but firmly closed. He tried to make her smile at the dinner-table, but in vain; and suddenly, in reply to some remark of his in regard to Jack’s coming, she said, “I do not wish him to come.” He looked at her in amazement. She was as pale as death, but in a firm voice she repeated, “I do not wish him to come on Sunday, or ever again.” “What is the matter, my child?” “Nothing, dear grandfather, save that I can never marry Jack.” “You frighten me, Cécile! Tell me what you mean.” “I am simply beginning to understand myself. I do not love him; I was mistaken.” “Good heavens, child, are you quite mad? You have had some childish misunderstanding.”